NEW YORK -- President Obama will deliver a wide-ranging foreign-policy
address Tuesday to the 67th meeting of the United Nations General
Assembly, including a renewed warning to Iran to suspend its suspected
nuclear program and will reflect on the recent violence in the Middle
East, White House aides say.
As Obama plans to tout his foreign-policy
vision, GOP nominee Mitt Romney and his surrogates are charging that the
president is downplaying the tumult in the Middle East and downgrading
the U.S. relationship with Israel.
The meeting
at the United Nations comes in the aftermath of the killings of four
Americans -- including Ambassador Chris Stevens -- in Benghazi, Libya,
earlier this month and as Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has
increased pressure on Obama to clearly articulate the circumstances
under which he would back military action to prevent Iran from obtaining
nuclear weapons.
Romney
took aim at Obama for referring to the recent violence in the Middle
East as "bumps in the road" on the path to a more stable and peaceful
region. The president's comments came in an interview that aired on
CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday.
"Look, the
world looks at the events going on," Romney said at a campaign event
Monday in Pueblo, Colo. "They don't see these events as bumps in the
road. These are lives. This is humanity. This is freedom."
The Obama campaign shot back that Romney was "misinterpreting" Obama's statement.
Romney
"is making reckless statements about the death of four Americans in
Libya, apparently for the sole purpose of his own political gain. Using
this incident to launch political attacks should be beneath someone
seeking to be our nation's Commander-in-Chief," said Obama campaign
spokeswoman Lis Smith.
Romney supporters also
seized on comments the president made in the same interview to argue
that the U.S.-Israel relationship has diminished under Obama's watch.
In
the interview, Obama called Israel "one of our closest allies in the
region," but Romney allies said that understates the primacy of the
relationship.
"Most Americans would say
undoubtedly that Israel is our best ally in the region -- the one that
stands for the same things we do," said House Majority Leader Eric
Cantor. "For President Obama to say that Israel is on par with other
allies in the region struck me as very, very concerning."
White
House spokesman Jay Carney said on Monday that Israel remains the U.S.'
"closest ally" in the region and the U.S. is committed to preventing
Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
"The
president was making clear that his commitment and this country's
commitment to Israel and Israel's security is as strong as ever and
unbreakable in nature," Carney said of Obama's 60 Minutes
interview. "There's obviously a lot of noise around this issue at times.
His point was clearly that his objective is to take every step possible
to enhance Israel's security as part of our strong relationship with
Israel."
Unlike last year's U.N. General
Assembly gathering, when Obama packed in 13 meetings with other
heads-of-state, the president has no one-on-one conversations with world
leaders scheduled for this visit.
On Monday afternoon, Obama and first lady Michelle Obama sat down for an interview with ABC's The View,
a daytime talk show, before hosting a reception for foreign leaders in
New York. Prior to the U.N. gathering Tuesday, the president and Romney
will each deliver remarks to the Clinton Global Initiative before
returning to the campaign trail.
Cantor
questioned Obama's decision not to meet with Netanyahu and other world
leaders for one-on-one meetings, while in New York.
"It speaks volumes to the lack of seriousness that the president is taking the current situation," Cantor said.
The
White House had previously said that Obama and Netanyahu will not be in
New York at the same time and the prime minister did not request a
meeting. Carney noted on Monday that Obama remains deeply engaged in
foreign policy matters and has spoken by phone with the leaders of
Egypt, Israel, Libya, Turkey and Yemen in recent days.
Obama
and Netanyahu need to sit down to talk through Iran, said Aaron David
Miller, a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center. But substantively
there is little they can accomplish in a meeting on the sidelines of the
U.N., particularly so soon after Netanyahu publicly criticized Obama
for not setting red lines that Iran must not cross.
"But
the absence of meetings also symbolizes something else," said Miller, a
former adviser on Arab-Israeli relations to both Democratic and
Republican administrations. "In the case of Israel, the problem lies in
both a clash of personality and policy between Obama and Netanyahu."
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